


Dread Wolf Guides You

by Gimmemocha



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-09
Updated: 2015-11-13
Packaged: 2018-04-25 14:59:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4965244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gimmemocha/pseuds/Gimmemocha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>TRESPASSER SPOILERS. Don't read this if you haven't played through that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning, I've been trying to write this whole thing for awhile now and it hasn't ... hasn't. I'm hoping that posting this part will give me some incentive to write the next, but maybe not. For those who've read my headcanon, consider this AU. What if Neria had never gone to Kirkwall, never learned about Anders & Justice, and so never went to Skyhold?
> 
> This takes place not very long after the end of Inquisition and before Trespasser. It may... MAY... lap Trespasser. I'm not sure yet.

Neria leaped through the shimmering portal of the eluvian and hit the ground with one shoulder, rolling as best she could, body tucked around the small bag she clutched tightly to her. Stone rattled and shifted as she clambered to her feet, dropping the bag to the ground and spinning to face the mirror-portal she had gone through. Lightning crackled around her bare fists, arcing between them in madly flickering branches fighting to escape her control, brilliant blue-white light flickering off the black Chantry robes she wore.

The lighted mirror flared, then winked out. Moments later, it went dark entirely.

She sighed and stopped feeding power into her magic, letting the lightning fade away as well. "Too much to hope they'd leave it intact," she murmured. "That's the Tevinter Chantry for you, I suppose."

The bag at her feet shifted.

She looked down at it, then crouched. "All right in there?" she asked, untying the knots that held the pack closed.

A black-and-red feathered head poked out, beak agape. The crow croaked at her, followed by a series of distinctly disgruntled clicks.

"When we're safe," she replied. "The Crossroads are anything but."

"There, are you correct."

Neria pivoted without rising, dropping one knee to the ground. Blue light flared around her and the pack, a shield springing to life. Inside its confines, fire readied itself, echoing in her eyes.

He stepped around the ruined archway, the man who'd spoken. Another elf, she saw, taller than most, bald, calm and confident, his hands laced lightly behind him. His clothes were simple but well-cared for. Across one shoulder, tucked into his leather belt, was a wolf pelt of surprising quality, something more suited to the mantle of a king than this quiet man.

He smiled a little, amused. "Have no fear of me, Grey Warden," he said. "In this time and in this place, we are not enemies."

She let the fire flicker and fade, but did not yet let her shield drop. "I'm not entirely comforted by the implication that in another time and place, we would be."

"Nor should you be."

She didn't question how he knew she was a Grey Warden. Few others would dare to carry the rampant griffon, and the one atop the staff with her pack was prominent, silver and gleaming. Still, it seemed slim evidence. Carefully, she finished opening the pack and helped the crow inside free itself.

It did not fly away, though it did flap its wings awkwardly, side-stepping to keep its balance. She set her arm on the ground, let it clamber up. While it maneuvered its way to her shoulder, she rose to face the elf.

He was studying the dark mirror behind her. Displeasure showed in the tightness around his lips, in the slight draw around his eyes. "You've been to Perendale," he said.

"As have you, it seems," she replied. "Though I suppose any return trips for either of us will involve a bit more walking. Not a safe place for our kind at the moment, in any case "

He cocked his head at her. "Our kind?"

"Mages. Elf mages, more specifically."

"You think I am a mage."

Neria shrugged a little, mindful of the raven. She carried her pack to a nearby stone bench in the room – courtyard, she corrected herself, taking note of the dry fountain with a broken stump where the central figure had once been – and set it down. Gently, she moved the raven from its perch and let it hop down onto the leather bag. "No weapon. No staff. Yet here you are in the Crossroads."

"Crossroads," he repeated, head turning to watch her. "Odd that you call it such."

"Is it?" She pulled the Chantry robe off over her head. Underneath, she wore a simple black shirt tucked into black pants, both close-fitting. Her brown boots reached up over her knees, and had been unremarkable enough to wear beneath the robe without giving her away.

When the moment of vulnerability passed without attack, she let her shield fade. Pebbles shifted under his feet as he took a step closer to her. "I have known only one other person who so named it," he said.

She glanced at him and folded the robe with more care than was necessary, given that she planned to abandon it. "It cannot possibly be the same person I learned it from."

"The world is smaller than we imagine it to be."

"Certainly never large enough to get away from memories."

"No," he agreed, sorrow lacing the simple syllable.

After a moment, she fished a tangle of leather out of her pack and set her fingers to straightening the delicate straps of her weapon harness. "How is it you know Morrigan?" she asked.

"I worked with her. Once. Briefly."

"As did I," she said, shrugging into the straps that fit over her slender shoulders, buckling others that crossed over her breasts.

"You did not like her."

"An astute observation, taken from three small words." She shrugged a little, a motion that both settled the harness and indicated her dismissal of a tingle of uncertainty. "I called her friend, once. But she… She wanted something of me I would not give, so she abandoned me when I needed her most. I have never forgiven her for that, nor has she forgiven me."

He remained silent, listening, watching as she took a herringbone blue-and-silver tabard from the pack next. Cloth and leather, it fit over her clothes and harness, its open back providing access to the sheathe for her staff. Once more dressed in Grey Warden armor, Neria picked up her staff. It helped her confidence, and she faced him directly. 

"I tracked her down once, after," she said. "Relevant, given that I traced her to an eluvian."

"And let her go?"

"We were not friends by then, but neither were we enemies. We had shared too much for hatred. I don't even know why exactly I decided to track her down, except that by then I had few enough friends."

"Surely the Hero of Ferelden—" 

_A crowd roared its joy and victory around her, the sound echoing from the entire city. Bitter smoke, burning blood, stung her eyes and lungs. His brown eyes stared past her, never again at her, never again full of laughter and smiles and love. "Please," she whispered, cradling his head in her lap, "please Alistair, please…"_

What he saw in her expression, she couldn't say. But he did drop his eyes away, then back. It struck her as a sign of respect, so she fought back the surge of pain and anger and the desire to lash out. "Do not call me that," she said past the tightness in her throat.

" _Ir abelas, da'len,_ " he said. "How shall I call you, then?"

A good question. The Dalish had called her Asha'abelas, the Woman of Sorrow. But this man, with his face bare of tattoos and no markings of clan on his clothes, was no Dalish. "Neria," she said, abruptly deciding to be only herself, here and now, with this elf who was not her enemy.

"And I am Solas."

For some reason, it amused her a little. She held to the trickle of brighter emotion, fighting her way clear of the sticky web of painful memory. "Truly?"

One of his thin eyebrows lifted. "Should it not be?"

"I hardly think your parents named you Arrogance."

"Perhaps it was evident even in the cradle," he suggested, matching her rise in humor with his own.

"A prideful infant," she said. "It's distinctive. Sadly, Neria is common, and means nothing in particular."

"It did once."

That was something new. Intrigued, she cocked her head. "Oh?"

"Ne'eria," he said, giving her name a curve and twist of accent that rendered it into something more lovely.

And vaguely recognizable, for someone with her minor understanding of Elven. "You're a mage?" she translated uncertainly.

"You are magic," he corrected. " _Ne era_ is you are a mage."

She accepted his correction with a slight incline of her head. "Your grasp of Elven is better than that of the Dalish I traveled with," she said. "Or at least no one ever shared that observation with me while I was there."

"The Dalish have lost much of what they once were."

"Not by choice or lack of effort. You cannot precisely lose what someone stripped way from you."

His eyebrows quirked briefly together. "That is true," he said.

She let him muse on it, finally sheathing her staff on her back, the silver griffon riding over her shoulder. On her pack, the crow, silent until now, clucked at her again in a series of rapid clicks. "Yes," she said as if she understood. "We'll go."

She looked back to Solas. "I don't suppose you know of an active eluvian nearby that leads to anyplace in the Anderfels, do you?"

He stepped to one side of the arch and inclined his head. "As it happens, I do."

Neria picked up her pack and walked toward the arch, giving the crow a nudge.

While it clambered up her arm and onto her shoulder, the bald elf said, "Do you mean to leave the robe behind?"

"It should make for a nice mystery to the person who finds it, don't you think?" she asked.

Hidden laughter added a new lilt to his accent. "I suppose it will at that." He gestured toward a path, then walked beside her, hands behind his back again. "You like mysteries, then."

She glanced sidelong at him. And up. "Some of them. You're very tall."

"That's not a mystery, just a fact."

"Every fact is a mystery until we solve it. Such as how you know Morrigan. A mystery, but once you explain it, it will simply be a fact."

"Subtle."

"Almost never. Do you ever mean to tell me who you are?"

"Have I not?"

She smiled a little. "Fine, keep your mystery. Though it's hardly fair. All the tales mean everyone knows – or thinks they do – everything about me."

"Though you may not believe it, I know exactly how you feel."

"You realize saying that only adds another layer to your mystery."

He stopped by the mostly intact wall of another building. "You like mysteries," he said, looking down at her with the smile-that-wasn't, the expression largely in the spark of his eyes, the subtle shift to his lips.

Neria arched an eyebrow at him, her eyes as bright with humor as his. " _Some_ of them," she said.

Before the hidden grin could turn into a full smile, he turned away and continued down the path. It twisted and wound back on itself, a deep spiral laced with gravel that skidded and rattled. It wound its way around a central platform at the bottom, in the center of which was a tall sculpture that resembled a tree whose bare branches had curved toward each other, forming a spherical cage. Set around the platform were six short pillars each topped with a cupped base plainly meant to hold other objects now absent.

She paused at the base of the spiral, though the path continued around it and out the far side. "I've only seen a few of these functional," she said. "They contain energy, though how they do it remains a mystery to me. I've never had the time to study one."

Solas stood further along the path. "Of course not. You've been too busy wiping entire cities off the map to kill a few darkspawn," he said with a lightness that belied his words.

His words didn't sting. "As it happens, I haven't. But I would if it were required, so I'll not quibble." She walked toward the sculpture, her eyes tracing the framework of branches. "Is that why we would be enemies in a different time and place?"

"One reason of many. Your solutions tend to be blunt and final."

She nodded a little. "That is true," she said. "So many darkspawn, so little time. And they are not an enemy forgiving of subtlety or leisure. They show up. We kill them. They show up again. We kill them again."

"It must be terrible, to live so futile a life."

He was right, of course. It was futile, and she would spend her life doing it. Wandering and killing darkspawn, only to have them breed and show up somewhere else where she would then travel and kill again.

"It's not entirely hopeless," she said. "Five old gods down. Two to go."

His anger was more than just audible, it was palpable. The air around her reacted to his ire, seemed to thrum briefly. "And what then, Grey Warden? Do you imagine there will be no more darkspawn? That they will stop breeding?"

She didn't rise to it. "Without a corrupted old god to lead them, they are easier to kill."

"It never occurred to any of you that there is a better way. To perhaps court the old gods, if they can so easily control the darkspawn?"

Now she looked over at him. "Never," she said softly. "You are making a mistake, in your arrogance. You assume that a weapon can be used for anything other than killing. Grey Wardens are not a tool, not an instrument. We are swords, sharp, lacking hilt or guard. We cut the hands that wield us as easily as we cut our victims."

He frowned at her, sharp, displeased, and she turned to face him. "Every time – every single time – a Warden has forgotten their purpose, the result is catastrophe. They think themselves clever or bold or brave to search for new ways to eliminate the Blights, or they involve themselves in things that are not a Warden's business."

"This from the woman who crowned a Dwarven king."

"I needed their army," she said. "The price for gaining it was their choice, not mine. So I gave them a king and left with my army."

"And no care as to whether or not the king would be a good one."

"None," she said. She shrugged and looked back at the sculpture. "Kings come and go. He'll die soon enough. Without the dwarven army, we would likely still be fighting the blight."

"And what qualifies you to judge?"

"I was one of two Grey Wardens in Ferelden and I had the treaties. Nothing else. They asked me. I gave them my answer. If they wanted another, they should have asked another elf."

He took a step closer. "Ruthless," he said.

"Not always," she answered, soft. "Once, I was an idealist. I thought the world was just and fair, and if I did what was right, I would be rewarded for it."

To that, he had no ready reply.

After a moment, he said quietly, "Come, Ne'eria. We must return you to your people."

Crow riding her shoulder, she turned from the elven ruins and followed him deeper into the crossroads.

He stopped finally beside an eluvian, one in a room with similar artifacts at each corner. "Here," he said. "When last I traveled this way, it led to a ruin by the lakes south of Kassel. The city had sunk entire into the earth. There is but one entrance that I have found, and the way is not easy, but it should not trouble someone as conversant with the Deep Roads as yourself."

He flipped one hand over and out, and the mirror rippled with energy, the way opening.

"Thank you," she said, stepping up to it. There, she hesitated.

He waited.

"I am sorry," she said without looking at him, "if I've said anything untoward. I… have perhaps spent too much time among the Qunari, and little remember social graces."

"You have been honest. At times, that is more welcome."

"You're very kind."

"There are few who would call me such."

"Well." She glanced sidelong and smiled a little at him. "Maybe they just don't know you as well as I do."

He smiled, the expression again showing more in his eyes than in the curve of his lips, and inclined his head.

The crow on her shoulder flapped its wings and quorked.

"Yes, yes," Neria sighed. Still she hesitated and looked at the tall elf again. There was something about him. A faint familiarity. Something understood and recognized. Something that echoed in the deep emptiness inside of her.

His eyes brightened more, his lips quirking higher. 

She shook her head. "Fine," she said before he could burst into laughter. "Keep your mystery."

_"Atisha aravas, da'len."_

She stepped through the eluvian.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The worst thing about writing this story is having to go back and italicize all the damned Elven. ;)

The pack came through first, a leather missile flung from afar. It hit, rolled down the ramp in front of the eluvian, accompanied by the muffled tinkle of broken glass. 

Neria stepped through behind her pack, turning unsteadily to raise her right hand and flex her fingers. The portal flared and closed. She watched it for a moment, staring only at her own reflection. When it did not reopen, when it stayed just a mirror and neither brightened or darkened, she sighed.

Her right hand slapped against the mirror with a wet squelch, left arm wrapped around her waist, holding to the fletching of the arrow lodged deep in her abdomen. Slowly she slid to the ground, her knees hitting the rock with an impact that should have hurt but did not. Red streaks marked the path her hand had taken as she fell.

She knelt in front of the mirror like a penitent, but she didn't know to whom to pray. Slowly, she fell onto her hip and over to sit, back against the mirror. She looked down at the arrow, at the blood that still pulsed sluggishly from around the dirty shaft. Her blue-and-green eyes lifted to the gray, uncertain sky. Her pack. She had to reach her pack, and the elfroot potions inside. 

It was easy to spot, the only deep brown blotch in a grey landscape. Unfortunately, it was at the end of the ramp. Well, she could reach that. At least there weren't stairs. Hands braced on the stone, she pushed and tried to tuck her feet under her.

Tried.

The wound pulled, shifted, wringing a strangled scream from her. She sat again, thumping back to the ground between her bloody handprints. She dropped her head back against the mirror and panted in shallow breaths, eyes closed, unbidden tears spilling from her eyes. Crawl. She could crawl if she had to. She just needed to rest a minute.

Absurd, really, she thought. Such an end for the vaunted Hero of Ferelden. Survived an entire blight, survived the Architect, survived the Mother, survived the Qunari, Tevinter, the Deep Roads who could count how many times, only to die because of a sharp-eyed Hurlock. No one would ever find her body, not until decades had past, and they would rifle through her pockets and pack, never wondering who she was.

Morbid, she told herself. That's enough. Get the potion, pull out the arrow, and live.

She dragged a hand across the stone and tried to get back to her knees. A wash of dizziness rippled through her, but she fought through it. She just had to crawl down the ramp. It was just a ramp.

Hands caught her by her shoulders, pushed her easily back against the mirror's frame. "Ne'eria," Solas' surprised voice came from above her.

Too much blood, too far gone, the pack too far away. "Not for much longer," she said with faint laughter. "Alistair's probably impatient."

"So ready to die, Grey Warden?"

"Yes," she said. Then sighed. "No. My pack. There are elfroot potions inside."

He rose from his crouch and walked down the ramp. She heard the glass shift when he picked her pack up. Gingerly, he reached in and pulled out a broken vial. "It seems they are broken," he said. "I hope there was nothing in there that would be ruined."

Broken.

"Oh," she said faintly. "Well."

"Can you not heal yourself?"

She couldn't. Not in this kind of pain. And he'd have to yank the arrow out, she'd have to remain conscious while he did. After he did. And if she fell unconscious, she would die. "Yes," she said. "Of course. Just… let me catch my breath. Sit with me awhile?"

Wordless, he sank down next to her with rather more grace than she had managed, legs folded. "What shall we discuss?" he asked. "Did you manage to get your crow friend changed back?"

He knew. It was in his sober expression, in the care he took when taking her hand in his. His hands were warm. "Crow?" she repeated, head back against the mirror. Then she remembered. "Oh." She smiled. "Yes. He was just too nervous. Once he was home, he changed back on his own. So you knew he was human?"

"Of course. It's always evident, except in those who learned it very young."

"I never did learn crow," she said, wistful. "Owl, though. Not very good at long-distance flying, owls. Wolf is better for distance travel."

"So it is."

It had amused him. She looked back at him, her lips twitching upward. "You and your mysteries."

"You like them," he said, smiling at her.

"Oh. That's nice. You do smile." She tried to lift her hand to brush his cheek, but it took more strength than she had.

"Upon occasion. You came through from the Dragonbone Wastes."

Her eyes angled up at the mirror towering over her. "Mm," she said. "I killed a broodmother there once. An intelligent one. Insane, too. She talked." Neria wrinkled her nose. "I hate the talky ones." She paused for breath. Talking was difficult. "We were in Amaranthine so I thought to take the recruits there. Bound to be a few darkspawn."

Darkness fluttered around her head.

Solas squeezed her hand, the pressure bordering on pain bringing her back around. "It would seem you found them," he said.

"Yes," she said faintly. Rousing herself, she shook her head a little, a wobble back and forth. "A great many of them. They were clever. Cut us off and surrounded us. I remembered the eluvian. Morrigan's eluvian. I blew a hole in the darkspawn line, told them to run."

"While you led the darkspawn deeper."

"Deeper," she agreed, a faint murmur. 

"You saved them."

"Hope so," she said. It was important he understand. She forced her eyes open. Had she closed them? She must have. It was dark. "They were my people."

His hand released hers, brushed at a swipe of blood on her cheek. "This is going to hurt," he said, apology in his tone if not his words.

His hand closed around the arrow shaft, nudging her hand to one side. She gasped as the shaft shifted, the arrow head digging into her gut a little more. "Shh. One moment more."

He yanked. The arrow head ripped free, torn backwards, shredding flesh, intestines, veins. Her screams echoed across the Crossroads, and did not stop when he slapped his hand over the wound. Light and heat flared, a lance of incandescence that followed the path of the arrow then exploded through her.

 _"Ir abelas,_ Ne'eria."

"Maker's hairy ass cheeks," she gasped, hand rising to her stomach when he moved his hand.

He cocked his head as she opened her eyes. "Better?"

It was. Her nerves still sang with the memory of agony, but it wasn't her first rapid healing and it would not, apparently, be her last. Muscles flinching from expected pain, she managed to get to her feet with his help. Her fingers, bloody still and growing sticky, probed at the area where the wound was. Had been. She felt only smooth skin and muscle.

Neria glanced up at her bland-faced savior. "Very nice," she commented, catching her breath. "Do you mean to say you could've done that any time?"

"No. Only when it was dramatic."

She blinked at him, trying to understand. "You're making a joke?"

"A little one." He grinned at her again, mischief in his sparkling eyes. "Surely that is not the first time you've been healed by another," he said.

"Oh, no. I know what spirit healing is, how it feels. I've dabbled a bit in it myself. That was not spirit healing."

"Was it not?"

She fought back an answering smile and rolled her eyes. "Fine," she said. "Thank you, since I have not said it yet."

"You mean _ma serannas_."

"You expect me to thank you in Elven?"

"It does seem the least you can do. I did save your life, after all."

She blinked at him.

He tilted his head to one side, waiting.

"I honestly believe this is the most bizarre conversation I've ever had. I don't suppose I've actually died and this is some nightmarish test I must pass before I go on to the Creator or wherever?"

_"Mala suledin nadas, abelas."_

"Oh, don't apologize unless you mean it. And I only understood _abelas_ out of all that." She brushed at her armor, heavy and sticky with a great deal of her own blood. _"Ma serannas,_ Solas," she said.

 _"Enaste._ But your accent is terrible. We'll work on it."

"You seem awfully certain of that." She started down the ramp. She had a change of clothes in her pack, though it wasn't fancy. On the other hand, it wouldn't be the first time she'd had to spend a day or more caked in blood. She took two steps and the world tilted.

Strong arms caught her, held her close. Her hands danced across his chest and she stayed there, feeling his heartbeat under her palms while the spinning slowed and the world righted itself.

Finally, she looked up at him.

Uncertainty flickered in his eyes. His hands tightened on her arms.

He was tall. And very, very close.

Quickly, she stepped back and looked for her pack, then walked to it.

"The healing," he said. "You should rest, eat and drink."

"I shall. Assuming everything isn't coated in glass and elfroot by now." She began emptying her pack, relieved to find at least the only thing dampened was the blue shift she wore under more formal robes than her current Grey Warden armor. She gave it a careful shake off to one side, and slowly became aware that Solas was still there, silent, watching her. Unaccountably, she found herself blushing.

Ridiculous. She wasn't some dewy-eyed maiden fresh off a farm. Briskly, she asked, "Would you eat? I cannot promise anything more interesting than travel loaf, but it does the job."

"No."

She accepted the curt reply without comment and sat, unwrapping the gooey concoction that had somehow earned the name of 'loaf' without actually being at all bread-like. Fat, meat, berries, spices to try and make it tolerable, it was bad at best, disgusting at worst, depending on who prepared it. The Dalish made the best, but what she ate had come from Soldier's Peak and was barely edible.

"Why did you save me?" she asked when she paused for a drink. Watered wine would rinse some of the taste away.

"I had no intention of letting you die."

"But you did intend to let me think I was going to. And to question me." She shook her head, clubbed braid shifting across her back. "No, that's too easy an answer. You were probing for something."

"Was I?"

"Weren't you?"

He hesitated, then moved to sit near her. "I suppose… I was."

A straight answer. Unexpected. "And if I hadn't given the answer you wanted?"

"As I said, I had no intention of letting you die."

She smiled a little and glanced at him. "So I don't know if I did give the correct answer or not, then."

He matched her smile. "I suppose you do not. Let's say there were no right or wrong answers, only revealing ones."

"What did I reveal?" She didn't expect an answer.

He answered. "You are fiercely loyal and protective. Like a hawk defending her young. You would sacrifice yourself to save those who look to you for safety. I wonder how far your wings stretch."

Uncomfortable herself now, she just shrugged. "I am, with no false modesty, a powerful mage. And my history has made my name a powerful one. I cannot abuse either, or I would be false to everything I know."

"False to your upbringing."

"Yes."

"False to your Alistair."

That stopped her, a finger-scoop of food partway to her mouth. "How do you—"

"The tales about you speak also of him."

"Few know we were together."

He shrugged. "It is there, for those who care to listen."

She stared at him a moment longer, then shook the food off her fingers, no longer hungry. "Yes, false to his memory. He cherished people, believed it was his role to protect the ones who could not protect themselves. He loved fiercely and with all his heart. I can do no less."

"It is not your fault he was taken from the world."

"No," she agreed softly. "It was Loghain who did that. It was Duncan. It was Riordan. It was the darkspawn and Cailan and the Architect and, yes, me. It was even Corypheus. It was all of time and history that led to that moment. It had to be. But I would let the world burn if it meant I could have him with me still."

"Perhaps, then, it is better for the world this way."

She took another swallow of wine, this time to wash down the bitterness his words brought on. "Hoorah for the world," she said, wiping her hands on her damp shift.

He rose fluidly. "It will not be safe for you to return by that eluvian. There is another that leads to Amaranthine."

She rose as well, if not as easily. "How handy to have a guide."

He chuckled and gestured down the path. "Come, then. Let me guide you."

They walked in silence for a time before he spoke again. "You seem very adept at opening the eluvians," he said.

"They all have a key," she said. "Sometimes you can open them by brute force, much like… kicking down a door. Though it does seem easier, lately. A nudge instead of a kick, if you will. I wonder if they get easier the more you cross them."

"As if you have been given a key."

"Mm. Something like that, yes. If such a thing were possible. I understand each eluvian has its own."

"That is what is said. Much of the knowledge of the eluvians is lost, and the most of the ancient network remains yet unexplored."

He stopped in the ruins of a library.

Neria's eyes lit up. "Oh. My." She drifted toward one of the shelves, fascinated.

"I thought you wanted to get back and check on your recruits."

"I do," she said, fingering the spine of one of the books. Then she sighed. "I do." She turned to see him nod his head toward a path that had once led to some sort of garden, an eluvian at the far end. "Where does it lead?"

"I believe it leads to a hidden room in the basement of Vigil's Keep, actually."

She stared at it. "How unnerving. Remind me to have that door guarded."

"A wise precaution."

"Does this mean, then, that we're not enemies?" she asked, cocking her head at him. "This is a different time and place after all, and that eluvian represents a significant tactical advantage for you, were we to become enemies."

He hesitated. "Let us say that it means I hope we will never need to be enemies."

"I hope the same," she said quietly. _"Mas serannas,_ for my life."

He smiled at her. "Your accent is terrible."

"We'll work on it."

She stepped through the lighted shimmer of the eluvian, leaving the Crossroads behind.


	3. Chapter 3

Neria slipped through the eluvian from Vigil's Keep and closed it behind her with a sigh. She really should tell someone else about it, but for now it was her private getaway. She hadn't yet bothered to explain to anyone how she came and went between Weisshaupt and the Vigil so quickly. It took mirror changes to manage it, but she had little by little mapped out several useful routes. None were as close to Weisshaupt as this mirror was to the Vigil, sadly, but it still cut the trip short by weeks.

It was little enough trouble to ensure she passed unseen into the basement. She just went into her room, disguised herself as a servant, changed into an owl, out and down to the kitchen doors, and walked right into the basement. 

Well, all right, it was some trouble. But it was worth it.

Today, worth it all the more because she was waiting on a group of recruits to come from Redcliffe and Denerim for their joining, led by other Wardens she herself had brought into the order. That meant time, time to herself for once, for the first time in months. Time she could use to finally explore the Crossroads library.

When she stepped farther into the garden, she heard a soft click, then a low chuckle. She knew that sound, knew that voice. Ignoring the quickening of her pulse, she stepped into the library proper.

At a stone table, Solas sat playing chess with the indistinct, fluttering red figure of a spirit.

Even as she watched, it froze, flared, and faded away.

Solas looked over at her.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to interrupt."

"No," he said, sad but resigned while he gathered the pieces. "It rarely has the focus to remain for long, these days. It was fragmented long ago, and has begun losing what little coherence remains."

"Then I'm doubly sorry."

"Thank you." He gestured to the empty chair. "Would you care to play?"

"Oh, I'm not very good." She walked to the table, skirts swaying, hands behind her back.

He smiled. "Am I meant to believe you?" 

"It would be polite if you did."

He pushed the pile of white pieces across the board to her. "You've been busy."

"Mm. I've been learning the paths nearest this eluvian," she said. "The one to Kal-Sharok has been a mixed blessing." She glanced up from setting her side of the board to offer up a wry smile. "I've not yet told anyone how I'm managing to get between Weisshaupt and the Vigil so quickly, but I've become a glorified messenger."

"What keeps your attention in Weisshaupt? I was given to understand there are… difficulties between the Wardens of the south and the leadership."

"Difficulties," she echoed. "That's one word for it." But Grey Warden secrets belonged only to Wardens and were not to be shared with mysterious elves in strange worlds-between-worlds. "Mostly, I search the archives for answers."

"I think we all spend our time searching for answers to some question or another."

Neria shifted one of her pawns. "Is that what you've been doing? I've not seen you in this section of the Crossroads for… what, six months or so?"

He paused after moving a knight over his line of pawns. "I suppose I have been, though I had not realized it had been so long. Time moves too quickly now."

"Dare I ask what question you're trying to answer? Two minds may be better than one."

One corner of his mouth tipped upward. "We shall see," he said.

They played in silence for a few minutes. The first moves were, Neria knew, more about getting to know your opponent than the game itself. Solas didn't seem to be settling on any single strategy; she wondered if he was simply playing against her rather than playing to win. 

"You look lovely today," Solas said.

She jerked her gaze up from the board, eyes wide. On a day of relaxation, she had chosen not to wear Grey Warden armor. Instead, she was in the simpler robes she used to meet new recruits or while working on paperwork. The blue shift was cinched by a black leather corset studded with silver. Her hair hung heavy over one shoulder, the black braid threaded through with blue and silver ribbons. The effect was simple but striking, and unusually comfortable given the corset.

"Thank you," she said finally. "I suppose I did look rather a mess the last time we spoke."

"Did your recruits make it back?"

She studied the game pieces in lieu of an immediate answer. When it became plain he wasn't going to change the subject, she said simply, "Some of them."

"Ah. I had heard that not all Warden recruits survive to become Grey Wardens in fact."

"They are all Grey Wardens," she said. "From the moment they come to us, they are our brothers and sisters."

"And there is a ritual, is there not?"

"There is," she said.

"I wonder if it is purely ceremonial."

"No," she said, flat and final.

"Keep your mysteries, then."

Reluctantly, she smiled.

"During the breach, it was said that the Grey Wardens heard a false Calling. That many went into the Deep Roads to seek their death, as is their tradition."

She slid a mage forward. "You're remarkably well-informed about Grey Wardens."

"I was at Adamant," he said.

She did not reply, but sat back a little.

"This Calling," he continued, studying the board, "supposedly affects Grey Wardens who have been in the order the longest. I wonder if you have experienced such a thing."

Neria repressed a shudder. She had, and louder than she'd like. She hadn't spoken of it to any other senior Wardens, or the First Warden. She still had time. She thought.

"I wonder what such a thing sounds like," he said.

"Are you asking or just thinking aloud?"

"Asking. What is it you hear?"

Maybe it wouldn't hurt to talk to him. It would be a relief to share it with someone, anyone, and this elf was certainly capable of keeping secrets. She watched without seeing as he moved his queen to intercept her mage.

"Most Wardens," she said slowly, "hear a song. They say. A beautiful song that pulls at them, makes them want to listen to the exclusion of all else, or track it to its source. There are rumors that the darkspawn hear the same song. That it is the Old Gods calling to them, and they dig to find it, unceasing and unrelenting."

When the silence that followed had stretched for long heartbeats, he prompted, "Most?"

Neria blinked her thoughts aside and looked at the pieces. "Most," she affirmed. "I… hear whispers. Voices, sometimes. A voice. I see visions. I think because I was touched by the mind of an archdemon, I experience it differently. The records are unclear, however."

"Ah, so it is that search that keeps you so often at Weisshaupt."

"Just so," she said, hesitating over her move. 

"Have you thought that perhaps what you hear is not the Calling at all, but some other facet of being a Grey Warden?"

"If I find an answer for the Calling, I may find one for that as well. And stop distracting me."

He watched her watching the board. "It seems to me it might be a simpler task to remove the taint all together."

"If we did that, we wouldn't be Grey Wardens anymore," she said.

"Is that so terrible a thing? Now, when there is no blight?"

She looked up at him, frowning a bit. His expression was mildly curious, but revealed nothing else. She had had more than enough experience with him by now, however, to realize that this wasn't just blind questioning. "Are you saying you know how to remove the taint?"

"I was simply saying it might be easier than removing one facet of it." When she made no further inquiries, he spoke again. "Would that not be preferable for you?"

"It would not," she said. "I am a Grey Warden. It is who I am and what I do. Lacking that, I wouldn't know who to be. How to be."

"A woman such as yourself would never lack for occupation," he said. "You could teach at one of the new mage colleges, for example."

"A lifetime of peace," she murmured. "Or something resembling it. I wouldn't know how to live that life, either." She shifted a pawn, screening her castle from attack. "A Qunari, the Arishok in fact, once said that I am a fighter. He didn't understand it, as I'm a woman, but I am a fighter. I suspect he is correct. It's all I know now. I am very, very good at it."

"And yet it does not make you happy."

"Why should it?"

"I would think that when a person finds a cause worth fighting for, they would be content."

"Saving the world from darkspawn is worth fighting for."

"You know the Arishok?"

The change of subject made her pause, but only a moment. "I do."

"The Qunari have been active lately in the Crossroads."

That got her attention. She looked up at him, blinking. "Not possible," she said.

He studied the board. "They move in packs, relentless, chasing things they cannot grasp."

"Obeying orders, surely. Ever moving, ever roving, someone holds their leash."

That earned her a rare chuckle. "Well done," he said.

"On a more serious note, surely it is Tal-Vashoth and not Qunari. The Qunari would never have anything to do with this place, or the eluvians. They would destroy them before they would use them."

"They did not seem to be Tal-Vashoth to me. There are a great many of them, exploring and searching."

Odder by the moment. "Do you know what they search for?"

"I wondered if perhaps you did."

"Me? No. I've heard nothing, and Arishok would have contacted me were anything serious in the offing."

"I would not be so sure," he said, nudging a pawn forward. "There are plans, though I have not yet been able to see more than the faintest outline of them."

"Perhaps I'll write him and ask."

"Do you truly believe he'll answer?"

She shrugged, her eyes flicking as she followed possible moves and countermoves across the board. "He should answer his Kadan. There is no dishonor in advising an enemy you plan to attack."

"He would warn you to safety?"

"No," she said, hand hesitating over a knight. "He knows I would stay, at least to defend Ferelden. And if we faced each other in battle, he would kill me, were he able to. Probably attack me himself, counting on me to hesitate."

"Honorable enemies."

"Yes," she said sadly, finally moving the knight.

Moves passed in silence, pieces exchanged back and forth. 

"The spirit," Neria finally asked. "A friend of yours?"

"After a fashion," he said. "As much as it can be, incomplete as it is these days."

"I had a friend who was a spirit, once," she said. 

"What sort?"

"A spirit of Justice. He was…" She sighed. "He was good. He wanted so badly to help right wrongs. I had no way to tell him that not all wrongs could be righted. He was pulled into this world by a spell gone wrong, another spirit in the Fade pushed him out. He ended up in the body of a dead man, oddly."

Solas looked at her, stopping with a mage piece in his hand. "I have never heard of such a thing."

"Nor had I, and have not since."

"Did he return to the Fade?"

"I don't know. I know only that the body he once inhabited was dead again, so at the least he moved on."

She felt his disapproval. "Spirits rarely do well in this world."

"The choice was his. I could have forced him out, but I respected his autonomy. I suggested it would be best that he return to the Fade, but first he wanted to find justice for the man whose body he occupied. Then by the time he felt he'd accomplished that, there were so many other injustices in our world, he didn't want to leave our world."

"Dangerous."

"So I told him. But, as I said, the choice was his. I often wonder if he took up with another person."

"You mean became an abomination."

"Well, strictly speaking, yes. But I knew a spirit of Healing as well, though I've never seen another. I did not speak to that one. It had joined with a friend of mine to keep her alive when she otherwise would have died of an illness."

He shook his head. "I cannot like any of these stories."

"Spirits have will, Solas, and any being that has independent will has the right to exercise it. They are not slaves to be forced to do our bidding, even for their own good."

"I would not have them be slaves!" 

Anger from the largely imperturbable Solas. She looked up, surprised.

"I would only have them remain where it is safe for them. Our world corrupts spirits, turns them against their own purpose. They become demons, and for the good of all they must be destroyed. You do not let a child play with fire, nor should you permit a spirit to inhabit another form." 

"They are not children, either. They are not 'ours', they belong only to themselves."

"Would you permit the child of another to be burned in a fire?"

She sighed. "No, of course not, but these are not mortal beings."

"Yet you would apply your morality to them."

"I rather think that's more your angle than my own. You're the one who thinks he knows what is best and believes we should impose that on them."

He cut her off with a curt gesture. "Let us not discuss it further. It is plain we will not agree."

They finished the game in silence, the unspoken anger remaining awkward in the air between them.

"Check."

With a sigh, Neria tipped over her king. "And mate in four, no matter what I do. I told you I wasn't very good."

"You play for defense," he said, watching her. "When you attack, it is swift and sure, and then you fade away again behind your defenses."

"And you play a game of misdirection," she countered. "You set up four strategies at once, and it is impossible to constantly counter them all. The only way to win against you would be a brutal offense that cost many pieces."

She gestured to the board. "I can fight, and will, but I avoid sacrificing innocents at all costs. Even my own."

Only his queen had pierced her line, but it was enough to ensure his eventual victory, backed up as it was by distant mages.

He had two pawns remaining.

She had most of hers.

"Instructive," he said quietly.

"I think so as well."

"Thank you for the game, Ne'eria." He stood.

"I thought I'd stay and study the library," she said, tentative invitation implicit in her tone.

He looked around at the shelves. "Be wary," he said. "This place has much in common with the Fade, as much as it does with the physical world. The books contain things best unknown, lest careless minds become ensnared."

She knew she had been forgiven for the argument, and proffered an apology of her own. "Caution is like air to me," she said. "Remember the game; my defense is quick."

He smiled a little and inclined his head. _"Dareth shiral."_

 _"Aravas atishan,"_ she replied.

"Terrible."

"Next time."

And he was gone.


	4. Chapter 4

Neria slashed a hand across the still surface of the eluvian, sending with it a flare of power that rippled the mirror open. This would, she decided, be her last public trip to Weisshaupt. She still needed the archives – and potentially some way to cross the Volca – but that was for later. For now, she would go back to Soldier's Peak and ensure that the food and weapon supplies were plentifully stockpiled. Levi kept assuring her they had enough to last a lifetime, but her inner voices were still disquiet and—

A spear flew past her nose as she stepped out of the mirror. Her shields flared pale blue around her in automatic response. Battle-ready nerves sang into awareness, and she took in the conflict in one quick glance.

Elves, at least thirty of them, under attack by Qunari forces. The elves were a mix, some tattooed Dalish, some not, most dressed in similar armor that looked to her to be quite old. Or at least of an ancient design. 

Among the Qunari, some wore no markings that would tell her to what part of the triad they answered, meaning they were likely Ben Hassrath. Some of the Qunari were marked clearly as antaam, and wearing armor. The last made her heart race and her stomach sink. She clearly recalled Sten telling her that the antaam never wore armor, unless they were going to war. And he had not replied to any of her messages.

But there was no question which side she would support, and being an elf on this particular battlefield was enough to mark her as an enemy. Qunlat orders were barked, and she saw a warrior turn his eyes to her, heft the spear he carried.

She moved, sprinting for cover, glad that the meeting at Weisshaupt had required she dress in formal Grey Warden armor. The spear slammed into the stone pillar she ducked behind. Neria risked a quick glance around it. The Qunari were too entangled with elven forces for her to simply slam storm after storm down on them.

Very well. The hard way it was.

Picking out the highest ranked member of the Qunari forces was easy enough. She flicked a hand at him, not yet bothering to pull her staff off her back. He went rigid in agony, unable to even scream. The elf on the ground at his feet scrambled away.

A weapon crashed into her shield, making her stagger. The spear thrower had closed the distance, was whirling his weapon for another attack. Neria flatted her palm and narrowed her eyes, a burst of frozen air sweeping over him, coating him in ice.

Before he could unfreeze, an elf with an outsized sword sprinted forward, sprang onto a fallen block, into the air, and slammed his sword onto the Qunari, shattering him into a thousand gory, slowly thawing bits.

She opened her mouth to congratulate him on the move, but stopped, confused, staring at the glowing blue lines trailing across his body. 

"Later," he said in a surprisingly deep voice. "Down!"

Neria dropped without question, heard his sword whistle over her head. From the ground, she called vines, a Keeper's trick she had learned in Amaranthine. The Qunari tripped, stumbled, and was decapitated.

The marked elf moved on. Neria searched out high ground and scrambled up a hill of pure rubble, getting a better vantage point. From there, she rained down lightning and fire, ice and pain on the Qunari forces, helping to drive them back. She had, she saw now, come out in the ranks of the Qunari. They fought to hold the eluvian. Surprise had been her ally; had they expected someone to come through, they would doubtless have killed her instantly. 

But there had been no Qunari on the other side of the eluvian, no sign of them. Had they left no rear guard? That seemed unlikely. 

"Antaam! Haas-toh bas saarebas!"

Neria whipped her head toward the woman shouting the command. She was familiar…

"Viddasala!" she shouted. The sound was lost in the general melee. Neria raised a fist, ripped power from the Fade, and slammed a bolt of energy into the ground between the regrouping Qunari forces and the elves, leaving a crater behind it.

That got silence for a moment. "Viddasala!" she shouted again, walking from her position toward the army. "Defend your actions. Do the Qunari intend war upon all of Thedas?"

"Bas Saarebas," the Qunari woman snarled at her. "Too long have you had your freedom. Arishok no longer favors his kadan over his duty to the Qun."

That struck deeply. "He knows of this?"

"Knows and approves! He shall learn that you have become an agent of the Dread Wolf. Your betrayal will mean your end."

"Tell him, then. And tell him this: His kadan says to keep your war from Ferelden's borders," Neria warned, forcing her voice not to shake. "It is mine, and I will repay any of her blood shed a thousand fold and make ashes of your lives."

Viddasala only frowned. "You are nothing. Your rebellion is nothing. You will find peace in the Qun, one way or another, Bas Saarebas."

Her eyes flicked over Neria's shoulder. With a gesture, she stepped through the eluvian, reopening it by some method Neria could not see. The rest of the surviving Qunari melted through the surface. No one attacked their retreating backs.

"You know her."

Neria glanced to her side, saw the blue-marked elf next to her, large sword slung casually over his opposite shoulder. As she watched, the blue light faded, leaving only what looked like scars, paler than the tanned skin around them. "After a fashion," she said, looking back at the eluvian. "She's Viddasala, a high-ranking member of the Ben Hassrath specializing in examining and passing judgment on magic. She shouldn't be using such a thing as the eluvians; her orders likely came from higher than her, but they must have had her approval for the plan."

"Now if only we knew what their plan is," he said.

"Neria," she said, introducing herself.

He opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, another voice intruded.

"Fenris," Solas said. "Follow them, carefully. Try to find out where they go, if it does not put you at undue risk."

Fenris nodded, a lock of white hair falling in his pale green eyes. He strode across the battlefield past dead and dying to the eluvian that opened as he neared, and vanished through it.

"Timely arrival," Solas said. "Thank you for your aid."

Her gaze trailed over him, head to toe. He wore armor as well, fitted perfectly, golden and silver. The exquisite wolf pelt she remembered from before was still over his shoulder, tucked into a finely tooled leather belt. Something in his posture, his calm acceptance of her stare, reminded her irresistibly of some of the rulers she had met.

Regal. He looked regal. She suppressed an urge to bow. "My pleasure. Who are all these people?"

"Elves," he said simply.

"I can see that. What did she mean, an agent of the Dread Wolf?"

Glancing around, Solas gestured her to one side. "It is their name for our cause. The Qunari, you may have already surmised, are starting a war. I'm not yet certain of their full plan, but they are attempting to gain control of a portion of the eluvian network. They have seized and destroyed several that they could not control."

Neria's gaze flickered around. "Invasion. Multiple points of attack at once."

"That is my thought as well."

"I sent messages to Arishok, but got no reply. I… honestly don't know if they reached him. Normally, no one would dare intercept messages from me to him, but in this case the Ben Hassrath may have decided it's best we don't communicate. It would be their choice, in this situation."

"The Qunari will always do what they feel is best, without consult or consideration."

Neria sighed and looked around the battlefield. "So much damage for a foray. The Qunari are at war. I hardly know how to credit it."

"Will you fight with us?"

Her conscience twinged. "No," she said finally, turning to face him fully. 

"Not against the Qunari. This is merely a diversion. I have plans for our people, a plan to restore what once was."

Neria took a step away. "You can't mean to take back Halamshiral."

"No. Halamshiral was itself an attempt to mimic an older time, a better civilization. It is that I would restore."

"Elvhenan? Solas, that's impossible. They had a magic we can never replicate, elves were immortal—"

"I know all of this," he interrupted, calm and sure. "It can be done. I mean to see it done."

Her instinct was to cry denial, but her tactical mind took over. "And the best time to strike is now, while the world is still reforming. The mage rebellion, the breach and the rifts, the rise of a new political power… It's unstable. The best time to nudge things over the edge."

"Yes." One word, but so much satisfaction in it.

Neria struggled but finally answered him, the only answer she had to give. "No. This is not a Grey Warden matter."

"This is more than the Wardens," he said, forceful. "Look beyond that, ma'eria. There are more important things moving in the world now."

But she had stopped listening. "Ma'eria?"

Solas blinked, his spine stiffening as he folded his hands behind him. "Forgive me," he said. "A slip of the tongue. A mage of your abilities would be—"

"No," she interrupted.

Angry, wrenched from his momentary awkwardness, he spun her toward the elves. "Look at them. Truly _look. These_ are your people. _These_ are your brothers and sisters, not a collection of doomed and damned people slaughtering what they barely understand."

He released his hold on her, but she did not turn back around. "Look, Ne'eria. Look at what they have fallen to, think what they have fallen from. They need you. They need your strength, your intelligence. They need you to protect them and lead them. None of them can touch your experience, and I cannot be everywhere.

"This is what you were meant for, before the Wardens came for you. Before they put you in a tower and on a leash. Become what you were always meant to be. Ne'eria."

She heard him walk away. Her eyes trailed over the injured, the dead and dying. For a moment, a moment only, she let herself see what he did. Let herself imagine what he urged her to.

Uneasy, she left her vantage point and went down to help. 

As she had told him before, her healing knowledge was minor, but she did know a bit and employed it as best she could. When it was over and everyone who could be tended to had been, whether healed or given mercy where healing was not possible, Neria sat with her head back against a broken pillar. An empty flask of water slumped near her side, a gift from someone or other. She knew that with a moment's rest, she would be fine, energized, and ready for the next crisis. But for now, she hovered near sleep.

"Neria." Not Solas, but the other one, with the markings. Fenris, she remembered. She opened her eyes and looked up.

He sank down to sit cross-legged next to her with the grace and strength he had shown in the fight. 

"Solas asked you to speak to me," she said.

"Yes. He said you were faithful to your calling as a Warden."

"I'm surprised he said anything nice about it."

One wry huff of laughter. "He does not care for Wardens much, it's true."

She cocked her head to one side. "And you?"

"They have their uses. A… The sister of a friend of mine is a Warden."

He looked uncomfortable enough that she couldn't resist. With a faint lift to her lips, she asked, "A friend?"

But he wasn't to be teased. He stared at her flatly for as long as it took to muffle a sigh. "My lover," he said. "Marian Hawke. Her sister, Bethany, is a Warden."

That made her laugh, a soft chuckle. "Did you just name-drop the Champion of Kirkwall?"

His lips thinned. "It is who she is."

Neria waved his annoyance away. "Apologies, Fenris," she said. "I hadn't heard the Lady Hawke had an elven lover."

"Of course not," he said, voice lowering another half-octave. "Why would anyone bruit such a rumor about?"

"No one is much eager to reveal that the King of Ferelden was the lover of an elf, either. Even though they're willing to grant me the title of 'Hero'."

"And Ferelden is comparatively moderate in how they treat their elves."

"Were you from Kirkwall, then? I didn't realize the Free Marches were so disdainful of elves."

He snorted. "Find me a nation on Thedas that isn't. But no, I'm from Tevinter."

She straightened a little. "Oh. I spent time there. A brief time." A shrug. "A very brief time."

"You're a mage," he said. "It would have been easier on you."

"Ah, so it's mages you hate, not Wardens."

"I did say I was from Tevinter."

Her smile reappeared. "True," she said. "Is that why you joined Solas?"

"Partly," he said.

"And does he think, then, that if I hear your story, I'll relent and join his uprising?"

"I am never sure of what Solas wants, except in two things. I am sure he's serious about restoring Elvhenan. And I'm sure he hasn't yet told any of us how he means to accomplish it."

At that, she sat up fully, tucking her legs to one side. "But Fenris, doesn't that bother you? Arlathan, Elvhenan, is an impossibility now. How will he restore the elves to immortality? Legends say only that it was the arrival of humans that caused us to lose it. Does he think if he kills all the humans, it will be restored?"

"I don't know."

"And the magic? It wasn't just some of the elves who had it, it was all of them. All elves had some measure of it. How does he plan to grant it to them in the first place, never mind deal with the consequences?"

"I don't know, Neria."

"Don't you think you should? What of your Lady Hawke, if his plan succeeds?"

Stiffly, he answered, "Solas has promised he would spare her."

Lips pursed, Neria noted his discomfort. "Spare her. So he does mean for people to die."

"People die in any revolution. This one will be no different."

"And if Solas attacks Kirkwall? She has friends there, does she not? Will she stand by and let him kill them? Will you fight against her? How will you face her if her Grey Warden sister dies because of your revolution?"

"I don't know!" He surged to his feet, the lines on his body flaring blue.

She looked up at him, met the furious glare of leaf-green eyes under a long fringe of snow-white hair. "I'd find out," she said. "Sooner rather than later."

Fenris stalked away, hands clenched into fists.

"That may have been a mistake."

Now Solas, from behind her. "Likely," Neria said. "I think you may have lost him."

"No," Solas said, sitting down in the exact spot Fenris had vacated. She appreciated the gesture as the statement it was. "At the end of the day, Fenris hates slavery and captivity more than he loves the Champion." His voice was full of sympathy and sadness for the elven warrior.

"You sound certain."

"I am. As long as he is not pointed at her, he will be a formidable ally."

"And do you plan to kill her when he isn't looking? Blame it on the humans, perhaps? It's not like you ever flinch at sacrificing a pawn, if it gains you a knight."

"He means more to me than a chess piece."

She shook her head a little. "Do you know I'm not certain he does?"

"Abide with me a time. Learn to know me better."

She didn't decline immediately. She shouldn't stay, she knew that, though there was nothing urgent at either the Vigil or Soldier's Peak that required her attention immediately. Doubtless when she returned, there would be, though. And after her precipitous departure from Weisshaupt, there was likely more than one message winging its way toward Amaranthine. Too, she wanted to continue her research into the lands across the Volca.

And there was the Calling. Always the Calling. Oddly, though, it was quieter here. She couldn't hear the whispers of the darkspawn calling to her, coaxing her.

"Stay," he said softly. "Ma'eria. Stay with me."

"For a time," she heard herself saying.

"For a time."


	5. Chapter 5

"Adhal."

"No. Adahl."

Laughter. "That's what I said."

A low chuckle in response. "No, you said adhal. Listen. Adahl."

"Adahl."

"Close. Softer consonants."

"If I say it any softer, I'll just be sighing." Neria threw a chunk of bread at Solas.

He didn't bother to catch it, but let it hover in the air in front of him for a moment. Just long enough to be sure she saw it floating there before he took it and ate it. "Adahl. Adahlen." He gestured at the forest around them.

"If adahl is tree, why isn't forest 'adahlan', a place where trees are found?" Neria asked, picking apart the small loaf of bread to eat a bite.

"Because that would be the location of a specific tree. Adahlen is plural. Trees. Or, in your language, a forest."

"So, 'the place of many trees' would be… what, Adahlenan?"

"Just so. As Elvhenan."

"Oh. The place of many elves."

"Yes."

They kept walking, trailing behind a few elves that remained from the battle. The others had separated off, taking different routes to the same location they would end up in. It helped mask the paths, a Dalish trick. Or perhaps a very old Elven one.

So far, they had gone from Crossroads to Crossroads to Thedas to Crossroads and now back to Thedas again. They approached a tall tower and walked up the stairs, still discussing the finer points of the Elven language, but when she would have followed the others toward an eluvian at the top, he set a hand on her arm. 

"Wait a moment," he said, nodding to the others to continue on.

When they had passed safely through, he walked to a ramp, one with another eluvian at the far end away from the tower. "There are now too many who seek these old passages. And there is more than one point to improving your accent. Stay behind me."

Curious but obedient, Neria took three steps on the ramp and watched.

"Elgar, garas! Ma halani lasa ghilan elvhen vir-ethan Fen'Harel."

They shimmered into being, spirits she assumed, glowing a vivid pale purple even in the bright sunlight.

The conversation grew too fast for her to follow. She caught hints and pieces of phrases here and there. The spirits seemed to be promising something; help, she thought, and something about travel.

"Ma serannas," Solas said finally, to which the largest of the spirits bowed his head, and they vanished.

He turned to her finally. "Should you come this way, the spirits will attempt to stop you. They will challenge you, and you must speak this passcode exactly. Do not vary. They are… quite literal."

"And the others?"

"Already know of it. They will teach it to others, as I now teach it to you."

"This is something you've planned for awhile, then."

He hesitated. "It is something I had planned long ago that has since faded. I have simply reawakened what was always here. Heed me now, Ne'eria. You must say this: Ar-melana dirthavaren. Revas vir-anaris."

Mimicry proved easier than learning a new language from scratch. Neria could repeat it perfectly with short practice. "I have no idea what I'm saying. Something about promises?"

"Promises to walk a path," he said, walking around to the side of the tower. 

"Vir-anaris. The path of… Wasn't Anaris one of the Forgotten Ones?" she asked, trailing after him.

But he didn't answer. "I wanted to tell you. In the battle. I was delayed arriving. I fear they would have been lost to me, had you not come when you did."

"They were holding their own. I'm happy to have helped."

"It was an impressive display," he said. "Not many mages can cast so many spells of such power in such quick succession."

"Grey Warden stamina," she excused it with a shrug. Then she grinned, impish. "You should see me when I can really cut loose."

"I shall," he promised.

He had paused by a mosaic of a type she had seen before in some of the oldest elven structures. The ones that were intact, anyway. Squares of metal had been pressed into an unknown mortar, forming shapes that were largely symbolic. At one time, the symbols must have been ubiquitous, something everyone would see and understand, but most of the meanings had been lost to time. 

This one looked like a stylized tree, with what might have been a fleeing figure in the lower right corner.

"Touch it," he said, stepping back behind her.

Hesitantly, Neria lifted her hand. 

_"Fen'Harel bids you welcome,"_ she heard in her head. Not in words. Just in understanding, as if recalling a story she had read in years past. _"Rest, knowing the Dread Wolf guards you, and his people guard this valley. In this place, you are free. In trusting us, you will never be bound again."_

She snatched her hand away.

"Fen'Harel? He put this—"

But Solas had said it was something he put in place. Long ago.

No. Impossible.

"What is going on, Solas?"

"There are more mosaics…"

"No. Not one more step until you explain."

Still, he hesitated. "Ne'eria."

"How did you find this place?"

"I came through the eluvian."

"I didn't ask how you got here," she countered. "I asked how you found it. Discovered it. Learned of its existence."

He exhaled slowly and simply stared at her, sad, resigned, waiting.

"Am I free to leave?"

He frowned. "What?"

"If I want to go, am I free to go?"

"You were never a prisoner."

She turned on her heel and headed for the staircase. Finding her way back to paths she knew would take time, but she thought she remembered the ones they had come through.

"Ma'eria…"

"No," she said again, not stopping. "I am not 'your magic'. I am not your anything."

Abruptly, he was in front of her.

Neria was familiar with spells of teleportation. She had never quite worked out how to manage it, but several other mages had. It mostly seemed to involve moving rapidly, rather than appearing and disappearing, and it always kicked up dust or disturbed leaves or papers, anything lying loose.

This was not that.

He simply… appeared.

His eyes were glowing blue and black lightning, then faded back to normal.

She couldn't help it. Fire crackled around her fists. "Move," she said.

"You must hear me out."

"There is nothing I must do!"

His ire matched hers. "You react out of fear, not out of sense."

"I react how I choose, and it is nothing to you. Move!"

"Enough," he said sharply.

"Move, or Maker help me, Solas—"

He gestured, a simple summoning flick of his hand, and all the spitting, furious flames dancing around her clenched fists vanished. She felt the spell go, felt it tear away from her, as if he had… What? Taken over her incipient spell? Was that even possible?

Was it any more impossible than where her thoughts were leading her?

He closed his fist, erasing the fire he had stolen.

She felt cold, felt the blood draining away from her face. "It's not possible," she whispered.

"I am sorry. I did not want to frighten you."

"Poorly done!"

He gripped her elbow, dragged her through the eluvian unresisting, led her to another mosaic. This one of a group of armed elves, a wolf's head behind them, hiding in twisting vines.

_"Fen'Harel has been falsely named a god, but is as mortal as any of you. He takes no divine mantle, and asks that none be bestowed upon him. He leads only those who would help willingly. Let none be beholden but by choice."_

She wrenched her arm free. "Stop that!"

"You must understand, Ne'eria."

"Why? Why is it so important that I understand?"

"Because I need you!" he said, spreading his arms wide to indicate the valley, the distant towers. "They need you. Your magic—"

"Is as nothing compared to yours."

"For now," he said grimly. "As the world is, yes. But changes come, Ne'eria. And with them come enemies. I will require allies against them."

She stared at him, green-on-blue eyes wide. "I don't understand," she sighed.

He turned away and looked out over the crenelated wall. "Evanuris, they were called," he said. "Elves, immortal and mortal as any of our kind in those years. Powerful, yes. But not gods, not in truth, though they called themselves such. Though they required worship and devotion. Though they were jealous and wrathful. Elgar'nan. Falon'Din. Dirthamen."

"No," she said.

"Andruil. Sylaise. June. Ghilan'nain. Mages, all. Powerful mages."

"And Fen'Harel."

He glanced over his shoulder. "Yes."

"You."

"Yes."

"You are the elven god Fen'Harel. The Dread Wolf. The trickster who deceived the gods and the Forgotten Ones, locking them away from the world."

"I am no god. As they are not."

She sagged back against the wall and tried to accept it. Just that, just accept. She couldn't. "And Mythal? Was she a mage as well, jealous and wrathful?"

"No," he said, looking back at the view. "She was good and kind. Powerful. Intelligent. Fiercely protective."

Neria shook her head slowly but could voice no denial.

"You are magic," he said. "Ne'eria. A mage, blindfolded and hobbled. You do not even see your bindings. You will, when they're removed. And then I shall be with you. I shall teach you to spread your wings and fly."

"Too much," she said faintly. "You ask too much."

"For now, I ask nothing but that you stay for a time. Learn the truth of us."

Her mind still wobbled, unable to grasp what he was asking her to. Finally she retreated to bedrock, to the one unaltering fact of her life. "No," she said, closing her eyes, then reopening them. Firmer now, she said, "I am a Grey Warden. I have burdens enough. If you intend to release the elven gods from whatever prison you trapped them in, you must fight them on your own. And if you cannot, I suggest you leave them caged."

"That is impossible. I told you, I intend to see our people restored. To do that, I must release them."

"Why?"

"Will you stay?"

So answers had more than one cost.

"No," she said, pushing off the wall.

His disappointment was sharp and evident. "So you will remain in your cage, even with the door open to you."

A piece of the puzzle clicked together. "Oh," she said softly. "Open doors. The eluvians. That was you. You made them open for me. As if I'd been given a key, you said."

"And you had been."

Neria lifted a hand to her head. "You know, if someone had told me fifteen years ago that I would leave the tower, crown a king, find the ashes of Andraste, then meet an elven god, I'd have…" She shook her head. "There's simply no frame of reference for my life."

His hand slid over her arm, and she looked up at him. Tall.

Close.

Fen'Harel.

She glanced away, disturbed.

He sighed softly. "I am as I have always been."

"Yes, but now I know it."

"Have you never struck up a friendship with someone, only to have it fail simply because they learned who you are?"

She had, that was true. The Hero of Ferelden had a reputation, a legend, and one the Hero herself rarely even tried to measure up to. She simply did what she had to do, what the Wardens demanded of her. But there had been those with whom she wanted to just be friends, whose company she wanted to enjoy. Inevitably, finding out her name, her history, ended the friendship. They were always thereafter unable to see her as simply… herself.

"You see?" he asked. He had been monitoring her expressions. "I was Solas, before I was Fen'Harel. As you were Neria, before you were the Hero of Ferelden."

"You know I hate that."

"Then I shall continue to call you Ne'eria. And you will call me Solas."

It helped, though perhaps it shouldn't have. It brought him down from lofty heights to the dirt and grind of the mundane. Her sense of the absurd made her smile, just a little. "Well, I suppose now I don't feel so badly for losing at chess against you."

"Stay, Ne'eria."

"Solas."

"Yes," he agreed.

"Answer one question for me first."

"A bold mage, to bargain with Fen'Harel," he said, a hint of teasing to his words. "Very well, ask, though I may not answer."

"Why did you call me ma'eria?"

"Ah. That. I have been called impetuous before. A better question might be why did I tell you now about myself."

"I assumed it was because I would have learned it from the others, and you wanted to tell me yourself first."

"Partly. Also, because I wanted you to know before I did this."

His hand slid around the back of her neck, and he pulled her into a kiss, his mouth covering hers, lips caressing hers. She felt the tip of his tongue brush along the soft inside of her upper lip, and delighted shivers fluttered down her spine. The length of his body along hers encouraged her to lean back, over his other arm that slid around her waist.

"Stay, ma'eria," he murmured, lightly twisting the length of her braid around one hand.

Her eyes opened. 

His hand dropped from her back to her waist, slender fingers making short work of the buckles that held her armor on.

She nodded. "For a time," she whispered, pulling his head back down for another kiss.


	6. Chapter 6

His kisses were unhurried, slow, as if he had nothing to do for the rest of his life except kiss her. It was heady, giddy, and her body's response was anything but slow in return. It was his hand in her hair, the braid twisted and twined around his hand, that dictated her responses. 

But submissiveness was not something that had ever been part of Neria's makeup. She accepted the pain he dealt in order to rise on her toes, get closer to him, to nip at his lower lip and kiss him more deeply, savoring the taste of him.

He chuckled and pulled her head back. "Gently, ma'eria," he chided. Her leather and chain tabard fell away to her right, the buckles and fastenings undone on her left. His hand slid under the bottom of the soft, fine black cambric shirt she wore under her armor, slender fingers teasing across her waist.

"And do you mean, then, to seduce me atop a stone tower?" she asked, teasing him with humor in her eyes even as they hazed over with a fine sheen of hunger.

"I have already seduced you," he said, leaning in to trail his lips along her exposed jawline. "I mean to claim you atop a stone tower."

"Arrogant," she murmured, eyes drifting closed.

"Do you wish to leave?" he asked against her ear, catching the pointed tip in between his teeth.

"No," she admitted with a breathless laugh. "But it is rather uncomfortab—" she snatched in a breath as his fingers swept across the curve of her breast. "—ble," she finished in a whisper.

"In this world, as in the world beyond the Veil, thought becomes reality. One only needs the power to make it so."

The heat of his kiss kept her from asking further questions, but she was not so far lost that she didn't notice the thick, soft fabric beneath her as he lowered her to the stone parapet they had stood on. Nor had she noticed when he removed her shirt and pants, but the soft nap of whatever she was lying on caressed the skin of her bare buttocks, then her back.

He held himself above her, the cold of his armor warming rapidly against her skin. She shivered anyway, cupping his face in one hand. The planes of his face were sharp, distinct under the tracing of her fingertips. She marked the curve of his lip, drew in a deep breath as he first kissed, then took the tip of her finger between his lips.

His knees spread her thighs, and he bend to kiss the white arch of her neck, the fragile line of her collar bone, lips lingering in the notch. His hands stroked down her sides while his lips followed, between her breasts, down the fluttering skin of her stomach.

Neria fisted her hands in the thick weave of the blanket, closing her eyes as if she could not bear to focus outward, did not want anything to distract from the feel of his hot tongue tracing a path through the curls between her legs.

His hands held her hips, lifted them slightly to better angle her for his mouth. The tip of his tongue traced a circle around her clit, licking it with tiny fillips of his tongue. Each flicker made her body spasm, twitch under him, made her catch her breath.

Each touch of his tongue lasted longer, each circle firmer, harder, faster. He felt her responses, learned the language of her body, and played her like the finest instrument. She answered him in full measure, unable to hold anything back that he demanded from her. Each cry was his, each lift of her hips and shudder of her body was music he called from her. 

Then he slid a finger into her, stroked her once, twice, each time with a circle of his fingertips inside her, a slow draw out of her, fingers curling as if calling to her.

She came, answering his summons with helpless cries, body writhing against the blanket, shoulders pushed deep into the plush softness as her hips fought against his hold. He held her firm, tasting her orgasm, drawing it out with lips and tongue and soft, wordless encouragement that rumbled against her flesh.

Finally he freed her, releasing his hold on her and letting her body tremble, letting her catch her breath. He stretched himself over her, atop her, kissed her deeply. He was naked, she realized, feeling the heat of his skin threatening to sear hers. She could taste herself on his lips and in his mouth. Her lips moved slowly, unable to answer the heat of his kiss right away.

He dragged a finger through the sweat beading from her temple. One corner of his mouth curved up, she saw as she finally opened her eyes. "All right?" he asked.

She nodded.

"Good." He stood, his smile thinning, turning wicked, a bite of cruelty to it, and his eyes narrowed. 

"My turn."

He wrapped his fingers around her wrist, then yanked her to her feet in one smooth flex of lean, hard muscle. Pivoting her around his hip, he slammed her back into the tower wall. His head bent to her neck and he growled, nipping at her skin. 

Dazed though she still was, Neria parted her legs around his hips. Still, he was taller than she and dissatisfied with her response. His arms slid under her knees and he lifted her, scraping her back against the stone of the wall and thrusting hard, once, deep into her.

But if the wolf thought his prey helpless in his grasp, he had misjudged. Neria carried her own monster inside her, a ribbon of blackest ichor from creatures that had terrified every living thing on the face of Thedas since they first exploded from the depths of the underground. Bestial hunger was a constant companion, a ferocity that every Grey Warden turned into furious warfare against the beast itself.

After a moment to catch her breath, Neria snarled a reply to his growl, bit his earlobe in recompense for the nip to her neck. Her legs twined around him, her hips rocking away from the wall. 

Solas accepted this change in demeanor with only a grunt, pinning her hard against cold, rough stone, smacking her hips back against the wall, the flesh of her rump rapidly turning pink and painful from repeated impacts.

She squirmed against him, the first to whimper in protest. Without word or warning, he spun again, sliding free of her and dropping her to the blanket. When she would have moved, he flipped her on her stomach and dragged her hips high into the air, thrusting into her again.

Neria got her hands under her, clawing the soft fabric, and rocked back against him, meeting his slamming rhythm. He clenched his fist at the base of her braid, fingers scraping her scalp and yanking her head back, exposing her throat to open air. He used it to pull her back harder against him, ignoring her frustrated scream at enforced helplessness. When she would have pushed her hands down, her body up, he shoved her hard, pinning her into the blanket.

She ignored it; she had no choice. Instead, she channeled her savagery into slower, but more solid thrusts of her hips. She fought his rhythm, sought her own, slow and hard and demanding.

His open palm landed sharply on her sore buttocks, a hard slap of flesh on flesh that echoed off the stone around them.

Neria yelped and would have twitched away from him, but his fist in her hair, his hand on her hip, would not let her. Before she could fight again, his hand left her hip to slide around her, teasing across her swollen, sore clit.

Her cry was one of surrender and despair dissolving into the pure pleasure of orgasm, the fight lost before it truly began. Solas rode her as he pleased, fast and quick, fucking her at his will until his own outcry mingled with hers, a last thrust deep into her as he came inside her. He held her there, himself there, muscles clenching with each spurt of cum.

Finally he collapsed beside her, releasing her from his hold, his mouth against the side of her neck.

Battered and drained, sore and sated, Neria did not bother to move. The wind continued to frisk around the stone and the naked pair, cooling sweat and stinging skin alike. Neria sighed into the breeze, one wild thing to another, one tamed, one not.

Pain flared, real pain untrammeled by pleasure, spiked through her, originating from the point where his lips met her neck. She flinched away, slapping a hand to the pain. "Solas, what—?"

"Impetuousness," he mumbled. "My besetting sin."

Frowning, she settled herself next to him again. "I thought it was pride."

"Perhaps I have more than one."

"Solas."

"Hm?"

"You turned my armor into a blanket?" 

He laughed, easier and lighter than the low chuckle she was used to from him. The sound made her smile, sleepy and sated. "Does it displease you?"

"It's quite comfortable," she said, relaxing again toward threatened slumber, "but I don't think I should wear a blanket when I leave. Though I have made more controversial entrances."

He kissed her once, gently. "That, I can believe."

"Is it so easy, then, to change one thing to another?"

"You can change yourself, can you not? Into an owl or a wolf?"

"But that is just myself. I… know myself as a wolf, and so I am a wolf."

"How much easier must it be to know a shirt as a blanket? The shirt knows nothing of itself."

Intrigued, she propped herself up on one shoulder, careful to keep her sore buttocks off the blanket. "So it theoretically is possible to turn a person into another thing. You would have to know them better than they know themselves, literally, but it would be possible?"

"Close," he said, hands soothing the shivers that ran down her arms from the cool air. "You must know them stronger than they know themselves. Hold a moment."

His hands encouraged her to rise, gentler this time than the last, and she shivered again. She watched as he took the blanket in his hands, studied it, then gave it a flip as if to shake crumbs from it. Magic rippled along it as he did, a wave that followed the fabric and left him holding a dress.

A gown, more properly, she realized as he turned and held it up and out to her. Palest green, sheer and fine, overlaid a slender, soft white dress. The green draped and belled, attached here and there to the under-dress with silver brocade that tinkled gently with tiny chimes.

She knew her eyes didn't conceal her avarice, or her delight.

"Take it," he said, nudging it toward her. "It is not armor, perhaps, but it is what you were born to wear. What you would have worn, had the world been different than it is."

Slowly, she took the dress, listening to the soft music of it as Solas helped her slip into it, helped fasten the silver stitching along her waist to perfect the fit of the garment. Unable to resist, she swished the flow of the skirts, twitched the draped sleeves that dangled almost to the ground. "It's beautiful," she said.

Solas pulled her still-braided hair back over her left shoulder. "As are you."

He wore his armor again, she realized, complete with supple wolf pelt over his shoulder. It made her smile again, and she brushed her fingers along the velvet fur. "Fen'Harel," she teased.

He took her fingers and kissed them. "So they have named me. Will you come below with me?"

The dress demanded grace and an elegant step. Neria knew more of war than the ballroom, but she had experience with commanding an audience and it was that mask she wore as he showed her the hidden stairs to the valley floor. The dress, whatever fabric it was made of, whispered easily across the grass, neither catching nor snagging, the bells laughing in high, faint voices at the attempt of mere solid earth to hold it still.

With her hand on his arm, he led her to a camp hidden in the trees, tents cunningly woven among the brush and trees so as to be near invisible until they were in the middle of them. Elves, elves all, waved and called greetings to Solas as they walked.

Neria lost more of her smile, post-love making languor giving way to disquiet alarm. This was no simple colony, no village of refugees.

She noted racks of bows, noted the fletchers at their task. There, leather was being turned into armor, stretched over shields. And there, elves new at swords were learning to fight with lengths of wood that would do little harm.

This was a war camp.

She stopped, dropping her hand away from his arm as she looked around. "Fenris said you intended war," she said. "An elven revolution? Is that your first step in bringing back Elvhenan?"

"In a sense," he said, gesturing her toward a central fire pit, cool now but ready for cooking enough to feed even more than she saw gathered here. He helped her to sit on a stump, and she found she was unsurprised when it shifted to accommodate her seat and back, gingerly though she sat.

"There is more I must tell you," he said.

"You cannot possibly have a bigger secret than being an ancient elven god."

"I am no god," he said, a quick frown.

She cocked her head. "I am aware. I of all people."

He sighed. "Forgive me. I am… unsure of your reaction to what I must tell you."

"As am I, now. You build more alarm with hesitation than you would in the telling of it."

"Perhaps," he said. "You know I mean to restore Elvhenan. I have not told you how I mean to accomplish it. And to do that, I must tell you how it fell."

"Not Tevinter, then."

"No." He hesitated. "Not entirely. It was me. Elvhenan fell because of my choices."

"The entire civilization? But… how?"

"The Veil," he said simply.

She thought, then shook her head. "I don't understand."

"No, nor could you." He sat back in his seat, elbows resting on the arms that had formed, fingers steepled in front of his face. "Once, in the oldest days, elves ruled absolutely. They were immortal, and had access to magics that no one in this time can imagine, let alone comprehend. The greatest of modern mages is as an infant striking sparks to light a candle compared to what was accomplished during the height of the Elvhen empire.

"Then it fell, because in one moment, in the space of a single heartbeat, magic was gone. All that they had built depended on it, was a part of it, and it was taken from them. Buildings fell, supported no longer by power. The network of eluvian shook and shattered, ending in a strange between-world. Art that had taken thousands of years to construct crumbled into piles of unrecognizable fragments, all because magic had ceased to exist."

Neria found herself leaning forward to better hear the quiet rise and fall of his tale.

"You know the tales of Fen'Harel?"

She nodded. "Some of them."

"How he locked away the gods?"

Another nod. "It is said he tricked them, sealed them away from the people so that he alone roamed free. It's why they fear him and—" She stopped herself. "Fear you," she said. "Fear and respect you."

"Lest I turn my dread gaze upon them, yes I know. Do you know how I locked them away?"

She shook her head. "No one ever says. And there are many tales of how you managed it."

"I created the Veil."

Neria blinked.

Solas waited, staring at her over the points of his elegant fingers.

Laughter burst from her, rich, full, uninhibited.

Now it was his turn to blink. He moved his hands as if not quite certain he was seeing correctly. "You laugh?" Threads of anger twined through his words.

"I'm sorry," she gasped. "It's just… The Veil? The _Veil_ , Solas? You created the barrier that separates this world from the Fade?"

"How wonderful that it amuses you." His frown darkened.

"It's just…" Neria tried to catch her breath. "It's just so… so stupidly _powerful._ So absurdly, impossibly…" She ran out of adverbs and settled for gesturing, a helpless flutter of her hands. "The _Veil_ , Solas."

"It killed hundreds of thousands, Ne'eria," he said. "No cataclysm you can imagine could approach what I did when I separated the world into the halves you know."

"Oh, Solas, no," she said, leaning forward to rest a hand on his knee. "No, forgive me, I don't laugh at the damage. I'm just… I have no words for the power it must've taken. You cannot wonder why people called you a god." Remnants of her amusement lingered, though she tried to tamp them down. "So the rest of the false gods, they're trapped in the Fade?"

"No," he said, short and curt, not quite ready to forgive her outburst. "And yes. You know where they are, or would if you thought about it."

Her brain analyzed, collated information, and presented her with an answer that slammed her back in her chair, jaw slightly agape.

He nodded, satisfied at last with her response.

"The Black City," she said.

He waited.

Neria had been raised by Templars and clerics in a tower isolated from outside influences. While she had since traveled enough to have encountered many different religions, deep in her heart she remained a devout Andrastian. 

To her, it was simple truth that the Golden City had been the home of the Maker, until Tevinter mages dared defile it by crossing into the Fade bodily and setting foot within, turning the Golden City into Black. That had, so Chantry lore taught her, caused the Maker to create the Darkspawn in punishment. Andraste had written the Chant of Light to be sung from all corners of Thedas, so that the Maker would one day forgive his arrogant children.

But if Solas had made the Veil.

If the City was a prison for Elven gods.

Then the Chantry was wrong.

The Chant was wrong.

"There is no Maker," she whispered.

He shrugged, unconcerned. "If there is one, such a being predates the Elves. I have never seen or known a true god. I have only known the haughty few, mages all but catastrophic in their pride, their callous hearts gone bitter and cold."

"Except you."

"And Mythal," he agreed. "When they slew her, I acted. I thought to save all of the Elvhen from their depredations. Instead, I doomed them."

"The elves were not doomed, Solas. They do not thrive, perhaps, but they exist still."

"As what?" he asked, bitter. "Itinerate wanderers and tinkers, reviled and hunted? Rats crowded into conditions no sane person would keep a dog? This is what they are, what I have brought them to. And it is what I shall bring them out of."

"How?"

"You already know that, ma'eria. Do not feign ignorance. It does not become you."

"What, you'll take down the Veil?"

But he didn't smile. He just stared at her.

Implications rolled over and through her like a roiling storm, flashes of insight, rumbles of the destruction to come. 

"Yes," he said.

"But you fought against Corypheus," she said faintly, "against the breaches."

"They pulled spirits unwilling into this world. The shock drove them insane. This world is unkind to spirits, except those coaxed here with gentlest care."

Another implication. "Are they elves?" she asked. "Elves, trapped on that side of the veil, become spirits when their physical forms ceased to be?"

His turn to look surprised. "Some part of them," he admitted. "A part that remains, focused and distilled, all the extraneous edges of life worn away."

"I can't…" She shook her head. "I can't know how to respond."

"When I release the Veil," he said, "they will be free, the evanuris I locked away so long ago. What they will be, I cannot say. Spirits, perhaps, as other elves. Mages still, potent and vengeful. Or some combination of both. I have searched and searched for them, to no avail. But it is certain that when the Veil is no more, they will reappear on Thedas.

"And they will not be glad."

She stood abruptly, bells chiming their thin-voiced alarm. "Solas, you cannot."

"I can. I must. I will."

Neria gestured around her. "Thedas would never survive it."

"No," he agreed. "It will not. What will come instead, even I cannot predict. But the elves will be restored to what they should have been; immortal and magical, finally with the power to strike back, to regain their freedom and dignity."

"I know our present society is not perfect—"

"Not perfect?" He stood as well, tall, angry, eyes dark with hidden lightning. "It is a nightmare, one I have made. Every elf who has died owes that death to me, Ne'eria. Elves are mortal because of me. Every elf child who hungers and sickens can look to me for blame. Every elf dragged off from her family, raped and tortured, is powerless because I made her so. Every elf who scrubs a floor and is thankful to serve in a house where he is only bloody-kneed and bent-backed thanks me for that kindness. Not perfect?"

"No," she snapped, "it is not. It is horror and degradation and I do not argue that, but I do argue that you cannot replace imperfection with imperfection and call it a success. Or do you say that Elvhenan was perfect?"

"It was better than—"

"Better? Shall I take you back to the library in the Crossroads, there to read the memory-book of a war fought over the color of paint trim? A war they fought, Solas. Killed each other as surely as any elf in any alienage killed by disease, and for a far more ridiculous reason than simple cruelty. Cruelty, at least, I understand."

"They will be free to choose to fight," he said, firm. "Free to choose to slaughter each other. Now, they are nothing but victims to whom wars happen, to whom slaughter occurs. The only difference between the elves of this world and the common nug is the number of legs they walk on."

She saw the conflict in him, the self-hatred, the grief. It defeated her utterly, and she softened. "Do not do this," she begged, voice low and for his ears alone. "You will destroy my world."

"I will give you another."

"You will kill people I love."

"They are dying anyway, will die, have died."

He was immovable, resolute, determination backed by the grief of ages, by the guilt of millennia. Against that, she had no weapon.

But she tried. She reached up to stroke his face with shaking fingers. "Solas," she whispered. "Fen'Harel. Please. Do not do this."

He closed his eyes and turned his head, kissing her fingers. "Ma'eria. I must."

Neria dropped her hand away and took a step back, leaving a void that neither could bridge. She searched for words, words that would turn him, words that would stop an Elven god. But there were none. There was only the wind sighing between them and the chiming of tiny bells.

"Keep your war from Ferelden's boarders," she said slow and soft, "for it is mine."

"Na'eria."

"I will repay any of her blood spilled a thousand fold—" 

"Neria, stop."

"—and make ashes of your lives."

When she turned, he did not stop her. The skirts of her dress spiraled around her ankles prettily, began to straighten as she moved to walk away.

"No, ma'eria," she heard him say, sorrow making his words slow and heavy, "you will not."

She didn't see the flare of purple-and-black lightning in his eyes. She didn't hear the shouts of alarm from the elves. She could no longer smell the campfires, or feel the breeze.

He stepped slowly in front of her. His elegant fingers swept up the fine, smooth marble of her arm. "I am sorry," he whispered. "It is only… for a time."

_It is said that if you travel into the distant forests, you will find in a clearing a pavilion of marble shaped like the branches of a willow tree curving around a statue. The statue is of an elven woman, her eyes downcast, an expression of profound sorrow on her face. So fine is the detail, so precise is the sculpting, that it is said you can almost hear the bells on her dress tinkling in a soft breeze. Individual strands of hair escape here and there from the braid that drapes over one slender shoulder. Just visible on the right side of her neck is the mark of Fen'Harel. There are those who claim it is a statue of his mistress. There are those who claim she was an enemy he could not bear to kill. There are those who say she is his servant, imprisoned in stone by his true enemies. But all the tales agree on one thing:_

_He will be back for her._


End file.
